


The silence of the sea

by estherlyon



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Suicide Missions, bear with me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-03-08 14:12:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13459932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estherlyon/pseuds/estherlyon
Summary: Saw Gerrera decided to hand Jyn over to Alliance High Command when she was fourteen. Mon Mothma and Bail Organa knew just what to do.





	1. Bad news

Everything was bright. Everything was pain.

Her mouth was dry and her stomach was heaving up the sweet, sticky taste of bacta. She tried moving, but her entire body hurt and her brain registered, faintly, that it was because of the hell she had put it through – she had climbed a tower, nearly fallen off a gangplank, been shot from Force knew how many directions, and carried another person who was larger than her to their deaths. Pain meant that she was not dead and if she was not dead, perhaps he was alive as well, and somehow they had been pulled out before the light that they had seen pierce the ocean turned everything into darkness.

A medical droid came to her, as she felt her vision adjust. It was a dingy medbay ward, the droid painfully whirring as it examined her, joints screaming for oil. She was breathing hard, loudly, she noticed, because the sound filled her ears when they finally stopped ringing. She was briefly informed she had spent half a day in bacta, because of burns and torn ligaments. The pain she felt, she was told, was mostly because she had put her muscles through all that stress, just as she had thought. She was assured that she was going to be all right. She didn’t feel assured at all.

“Cassian-“ the words slipped from her mouth despite herself, “the plans.”

“Captain Andor is unconscious. He has gone through three surgeries and is due to a battery of bacta treatments,” said the droid, “I don’t know about any plans.”

Jyn settled against the pillows and let sleep claim her once more.

*

Later, when she woke up again, the droid escorted her to the medbay refresher, a small, clean ‘fresher but moldy looking, because the humidity on Yavin IV seemed to be merciless. As the droid droned on about her kidney function, she glared at it as she shut the door on its face. She turned the lights over the mirror and checked the reflection there. Her skin looked smooth, if slightly sallow, her lips almost the color of her pale cheeks. She had tiny cuts on her face, but the soot from the explosions she had barreled through on Scarif had been washed off. She tentatively touched the apples of her cheeks and her skin felt different there, like the bacta had cleared the layers of sunburnt skin she had grown used to feeling on her face in the last years. Even her hair felt different, she admitted, because the soggy air of the forest was very different to that of the sea.

When she trudged to her medbay bed, the medical droid wheeling her IV pole behind her, she found Mon Mothma sitting on chair next to it, a neutral look on her face. Jyn’s aching muscles stiffened, a natural response to seeing one of the people who she irrationally felt were responsible for their current state and for the deaths of so many people. The Chandrilan’s eyes looked vacant, though, like she had too much on her mind. Her pristine white robes seemed to almost blend in on the off white and muted grays of the medbay. Despite her visibly distressed appearance, not a hair on her head was out of place, which had made Jyn uneasy ever since she had walked into the Alliance’s war room a week before.

“Jyn,” the older woman said, once she had settled back in bed, the medical droid clucking and beeping around them, “I can call you Jyn, can’t I?”

She shrugged and focused expectant eyes on the senator, her hands neatly folded over the sheets covering her bruised legs.

“I am sorry,” the woman began, and at those words, something vicious and cold ran down Jyn’s back.

“Is it Cassian?” she asked, her mouth feeling like it was filled with ash.

“I beg your pardon?” Mothma asked, bewildered and then her blue-green eyes widened, “oh, no. Captain Andor is in recovery, I’m told. I meant to apologize again for our treatment of you.”

“Oh. It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” she snapped, feeling her nostrils burn with the memory of singed flesh and ozone.

“Perhaps,” the senator said resignedly, “I just wanted to make sure you understood that some of the Council’s decision are out of High Command’s hands.”

“Some?” Jyn defied, eyebrows raised.

“Yes, some. For instance… You probably don’t remember, but we’ve met before.”

Jyn tried recollecting those on High Command she had met as a child, before Saw had decided that it was too big a risk to keep raising her amongst his Partisans, before Saw himself had broken with the Alliance. The woman before her was not one of them. She shook her head.

“I was the one that persuaded Senator Organa to take charge of your predicament,” she said with a soft smile, which faded almost immediately, “Jyn, I’m sorry to say I have some bad news.”

Something seized in her heart, which she thought that after the last few days would be as coarse as the soles of her feet against the surprisingly soft medbay linen.

“After the Council refused to approve your mission, Senator Organa and I decided it was time for desperate measures. He has a friend – a former general like him – who is living on Tatooine and that the Senator thought could help us. He asked the princess to go meet this man.”

Jyn saw that the woman was not done speaking, so she smothered the countless questions she felt bubble up in her throat.

“When you- when you and Captain Andor set off for Scarif and we decided to back you with the fleet, I think- I think he told her to divert there to receive your transmission.”

“Did she?” Jyn asked, her voice sounding hollow and small to her own ears.

“Yes, but-“ Mothma paused, seemed to choose her words carefully, “when the Imperial moved in after the Death Star blast, her ship was boarded.”

Jyn felt her ears start ringing and her heart beating like it was punching her sternum.

“Is she-?”

“She was captured, Jyn,” said the senator, carefully, “the plans aren’t with her. The Imperials are combing the area for them, which tells us that she got them away from her somewhere, but-“

“Her cover is blown.”

Mothma nodded, “the Senate was dissolved.”

Both women kept looking at each other, seemingly getting their thoughts in order at the same time. Then, Jyn started fumbling with her IV accesses.

“Jyn, wait for a medical droid to do that,” the woman sighed, “you’ll only hurt yourself.”

She looked up from the bruised inside of her arm, “you’re not stopping me.”

“I have seen evidence that it would be fruitless to do so.”

*

Her heart broke when she saw him. He was sickly pale, his eyes shadowed, his features even sharper than usual. They had shaved him, pushed his hair to the side over his forehead, and got him into a soft hospital gown – something they hadn’t done to her; she was wearing some leftover fatigues, which had to be folded back at the cuffs. The cloth hung a little too big on his lithe body and she could see the bacta patches on his ribs through it. His legs looked fine, even under the sheets, though she had been told he was going to have to work hard to regain their use, and his breathing looked easy, which was a comfort to how horrible it had sounded when she found him on the top of that tower, after he had shot the man in white.

Jyn felt her eyes brimming with tears and she couldn’t help herself. She leaned over him and brushed her mouth over his, feeling it so different – his skin smooth and his lips chapped – and yet so familiar, the taste and the smell of him something she felt she could recognize anywhere. When she drew back, his eyes flickered open and she found herself half laughing, because it was just like one of those Alderaanian storybooks she had been given when she was still a child, sort of, about princesses and monsters and miraculous kisses.

“Jyn,“ he rasped, so low that if she hadn’t been leaning halfway on top of him she wouldn’t have heard it, but it sounded just like the many times he had yelled it in the last days.

“Don’t talk,” she whispered, “your lungs are really weak.”

“The plans-“

“Leia got the plans, but she got into trouble,” she paused, bit her lip almost raw trying to find her words and clasped his hand, tight, “I’m going to get her out of it.”

His heavy-lidded eyes opened almost to their full, “Jyn, what are you-“

“I have to, Cassian,” she fixed a look at him that she hoped he would understand – deep down she knew he would, “it’s Leia.”

He nodded, because he did. Of course he did. He rubbed her hand with his fingers. His hands weren’t clammy like they had been on Scarif, when they had sat down on the sand to wait for death to claim them, basically. Now they were dry and cold; she could feel the ridges on his palm, calloused like her own. She looked from their linked hands to his brown eyes – old man eyes on a young face, she had always thought – and they were softened, like they had been on the turbolift in the datavault.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, attempting to hide her face with the wisps of her hair that were falling from her bun.

“Like what?” he asked, bemused.

“Like you’re never going to see me again.”

She chanced a glance at him and saw that he had his jaw clenched, but that he seemed to be laughing, “that’s not what I was going for.”

The last bit of the sentence was wheezed out and she backed away from him for a bit, gesturing for a medical droid to come over.

“I feel fine,” he protested, and she shot him a look.

“You do look fine, for someone I thought I saw dying,” the words fell out of her mouth and her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach with the memory.

“I’m sorry.”

She laughed, because the whole situation was ridiculous, “not your fault, but please don’t be an idiot.”

“I should say the same to you,” he said, looking for a beat to where she had stashed a blaster on her belt, “take Kay with you. Please.”

“Well, I see no other way of either flying out of here or of boarding an Imperial space station. Bodhi’s-“

“I heard he should be fine. Baze and Chirrut-”

She squeezed his fingers, “I know.”

He turned his eyes to her again and she felt the words bubbling up to her throat – _I love you. Please don’t die. Please don’t do anything stupid. Wait for me._

Jyn didn’t know where he found the strength, but he used the one hand that wasn’t riddled with IV accesses and monitors to pull her down to him. She tasted bacta on his tongue and smelled the tanginess of antiseptics on his skin.

“Come back to me,” he whispered, when she pulled away and rested her forehead against his.

“Always,” she mumbled.

She knew that was an impossible promise to make.

But she was going on an impossible mission. For the second time.

 


	2. A new home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all who kudoed and commented and mentioned getting out their pompoms. This fandom is the best! 
> 
> I'm estherlyon on tumblr if you want to scream at and with me.

Jyn woke up with a gasp and while she waited for her heart rate to lower, she stretched her legs as far as her tendons allowed, feeling the muscles there burn with the effort. It was something she had taught herself to relieve the feeling of claustrophobia. Her nightmares, after all, were steeped in the feeling: they usually involved cramped spaces with little light, reminiscent of where she had been left the two times she was abandoned; one at eight years old, another at fourteen.

It helped, then, to feel the soft sheets against her legs in the expanse of her sturdy, fairly large mattress, the sort of luxury she never dreamed she would have again after her mother had died and her father had disappeared. She breathed in and out for a few minutes and then got up, throwing nimble feet on the duracrete floor and padding barefoot over to her small kitchen. She made tea and put two slices of bread to toast, trying to smother the leftover feeling of impotence with practical day-to-day actions. When her breakfast was ready, she carried it outside with her, to the small porch of her small house. She sat down on a bench, crossing her legs like her mother told her the Jedi did, and propped the plate on her thighs. As she ate – still a little too quickly because old habits were hard to break -, she breathed in and took the view before her.

Jyn always wondered if they knew, when she was left here, that seeing the largest of Alderaan’s oceans curling onto the sand below would soothe some of her most irrational fears. She fixed her eyes on the horizon before her, where there was not even the smallest glimpse of land, and felt her stiff muscles relax little by little. It was a stark contrast to the bunker on Tamsye Prime where her adoptive father had left her with a knife, a blaster and two days worth of food, never to be seen again. No matter what one thought of Saw Gerrera, however, he wasn’t as ruthless as he could appear to be. Two days later, just as she was about to leave the bunker looking for food and a way off planet, an Alliance operative came for her.

And this was how she had ended up in that small house – a cabin, really – perched on the side of a hillock and from which she could see the beach below and the wide expanse of the sea. It had been six years since then; six years of occasionally waking up choked with fear and heartbreak over every parental figure she had known and finding relief in the sound of the crashing waves. 

As she finished drinking her tea – black and strong, with a little splash of nerf milk – she walked back inside to get ready for her day. In a sense, she had been given the sort of quiet life her parents had sought when she was a small child and they had fled Coruscant for a life of farming on Lah’mu. The hill her cabin was built on had land on which she could plant some vegetables with whatever little farming skills her father had taught her, so she occasionally passed along something or other to be sold at the market in the neighboring village. She had a sole farming droid to help her with that, but she found she liked working under the sun, her hands calloused and smelling of wet earth. She felt like it was something precious, this escape from life as a child soldier, even if its horrors still occasionally haunted her at night, even if she somehow felt that the reason she had spent most of the life with the adults around her trying to hide her was yet going to come and get her.

Somehow, Jyn had made it to twenty-one without that happening. With Saw, she was known as Liana. In the village, everyone called her Tanith. Very few people knew her actual name and the reasons for that got blurry everyday. She remembered her parents, of course: her father’s quiet strength and her mother’s intensity; his calloused fingers as he explained what was in the sky and her mother’s hands – soft and rough at the same time – as she in turn talked about the earth below. However, much as they were very good at teaching her about very complicated things – nebulas, sediment formations, the life-span of stars, and tectonic plates – they didn’t talk about the reasons they did things. Why they went from living in an apartment in Imperial Center to inhabiting a very rudimentary farm on Lah’mu; why they needed to rehearse an escape where Jyn and her mother hid themselves in a hatch in the dark; who was that man in white who was such good friends with Papa and then had killed Mama before her very eyes.

The only tangible things Jyn carried with her from life with her parents were the scarred knuckles she acquired learning to hit things after they were gone and the crystal she wore around her neck. Her mother had told her to trust in the Force. In her most dire moment of desperation, the Force had thrown her in the path of the soft-spoken senator whom she had seen when she was a child getting into arguments with Saw about how to defeat the Empire. 

She sat down in the small makeshift communications bay in her living room and checked her secure message lines for any news. One of them flickered in blues and greens and suddenly familiar features appeared in holoform before her.

“Hey,” said the girl in the message, “I’m flying down later today, because classes are finally out. Hope you’re in the mood for sparring. Should tell you, though, I’m bringing someone along… I hope that’s okay. Sometimes he’s a pain the ass, but most of the time he’s all right. You know how Papa gets about security and all. So I’ll see you then.”

Jyn frowned at the end of her friend’s message. Queen Breha and Bail Organa toed the lines between raising their daughter as their successor and someone down to earth fairly competently. When Jyn had arrived and been settled in Catrynn Cove, it had already been a secret holiday destination of theirs for a few years. It was on an island off a remote part of a southern continent that they had discovered in their youth. The local villagers didn’t like outsiders and were only too happy to keep their secret. When they had adopted their only child, more or less at the same time that the Empire was established, it quickly became the young princess’s favorite place in her home planet. Their confidence in the local population was what had motived their sending Jyn there. Whenever the young Leia Organa wasn’t busy with school or with royal engagements, she visited Jyn.

She found it was strange, however, that someone should accompany Leia. Her only escort in her visits was a normally obnoxious protocol droid, which Jyn would have fun threatening to reprogram. There had never been any sort of security personnel, because Leia had been trained to protect herself from early age – it was the least her parents could do with the Galaxy in a constant state of war since well before they were born. 

Jyn had a lot that she could teach Leia, when she thought about it. Even though Organa had always involved his daughter in his rebel activities – it was how Jyn had first met them, after all – Leia’s life had been a far cry from Jyn’s. In the first opportunities she had seen the young princess, Jyn admitted she had felt some level of resentment, but after Saw had abandoned her and she had been picked up by the Organas, she began to feel a fierce protectiveness towards her new friend.

Perhaps because she was the first real friend Jyn had had in her life.

Jyn looked at the chrono in the comm console. If Leia was flying there later in the day, she was going to get to Catrynn Cove in the middle of the afternoon, since Aldera was four hours ahead. That left Jyn enough time to go into town for a few supplies in case the other girl decided to stay for dinner, along with the companion, whoever that was. So she finished her tea, breathing in its soothing smell along with the ocean breeze, and then went inside to get ready to start her day.

 

*

 

Catrynn Cove was one of many fishing villages spread across Orga Island, so named because its first settlement by Humans was led by an old ancestor of the current Alderaanian reigning dynasty. Its population was around less than a thousand sentients, most of whom were descendants of those early settlers. They lived off fishing, mostly traded to other parts of the island, and off their own agricultural endeavors, relying on the continent only for technology, which could be acquired in the cities closest to it, Saavre or Sivv. Whenever Jyn found herself looking for parts for things like her speeder, her comm console or the little farming equipment she had in her employ, she would jet in a transport to either one of them.

She didn’t mingle with the locals, just kept a respectful attitude since she was on their turf, and enjoyed the respect they first conceded her because she was seemingly a protégée of the royal family and then that she earned by concerning herself only with her business. Her time as a partisan in Saw’s cadre gave her the ability to quickly read into local customs and habits, so she learned to haggle and to negotiate her farming surplus with relative ease. The first time she felt one of the land tremors that were typical of the region, the local leaderships – two women who were also said to be sorceresses – knocked on her door to see if she was alright and tell her that they had sirens that would go off in case there was the threat of tidal waves and they needed to head onto high ground. Since then, she had felt like she belonged there, more or less.

Her day proceeded like an ordinary one. She looked over her crops, argued with the droid about humidity levels and soil acidity. Later, a walk into the market afforded her with news of the surrounding area: how the snow had come early to the mountains near Saavre this year, which could be seen from the southern tip of the island or how Sivv was gearing up to host a smashball tournament. Her closest neighbor, Dominika, a middle-aged woman with a swirling head of magenta hair who sold seasoned bread at the market, showed her some holos of her older daughter, who had gone to university in Sivv and then decided move to Aldera. She moved on to her customary haggle with the butcher, Mik, for some nerf meat she could cook in a stew, now that the nights were beginning to get cold, and for some additional shopping, always keeping her ears open for anything unusual and her appetite open for anything that the villagers might offer her a taste of. She got back home in the early afternoon.

After a quick lunch of fish and some of Dominika’s seasoned bread, she curled on the porch bench for a nap. She had meant to wake up at a reasonable enough hour to perhaps do some fishing herself when the sun wasn’t as a high, but the nightmare that previous night must have demanded more of her than she had previously thought. Jyn, however, was a light sleeper, and she woke up when she felt someone place their foot in the staircase that led uphill, which was connected to her porch 

She was offered the vision of the heiress of the planet’s throne carrying what looked like a harpoon up the durasteel steps.

“What is _that_?”

“If Threepio were here he would say that is no way to greet me,” snorted Leia.

Jyn got up off the bench, quickly wiping sleep off her features, and helped the younger girl with the heavy object.

“What is this, your highness?” she snorted as she easily lifted it off the princess’s shoulder.

“It’s a gift,” Leia replied easily, “it’s what Gungans use to hunt whales on Naboo. I was on a trip there with Papa and we thought you’d like it.”

Jyn felt her ears heat up with embarrassment. Even after seven years living under the Organas’ protection, she still wasn’t used to their habit of showing her affection. She had amassed so far a fairly large collection of tools and weapons brought to her by Leia and Bail himself from all parts of the Galaxy, even without her ever mentioning that she liked having them around, something that made her feel slightly flustered. This time it was no exception.

She had learned, however, to simply thank them and then to treasure these objects as much as she did the crystal her mother had placed tied around her neck the last time they had spoken.

Both young women walked into the cabin and Jyn settled the fairly large harpoon against one of the walls in the living room. Leia flopped on the sofa in the living room, propping her short bare legs on a small work stool Jyn had lying around in a decidedly un-regal manner. Jyn felt her lips turn up in a smile despite herself.

“So where is your bodyguard?” she asked, as she rummaged around in the kitchen for a way to feel more comfortable with having people in her house.

Despite it being Leia, it was never easy, having someone in her space.

“Bodyguard?” the princess seemed genuinely confused, “oh! No, he’s not a bodyguard. More like… a teacher of sorts?”

Jyn just raised an eyebrow in response and brought them both cups of steaming tea.

“Explain?”

“Well, Papa wants me to take a senate seat next term. He feels I’m ready to hold my own. You know what that means.”

“Oh, Force, Leia.”

“What?”

“Can’t believe you need a teacher to learn to sit around paying attention to boring speeches,” she teased.

Leia rolled her eyes and just fixed her with a stare. 

“So he’s a handler,” she said.

“And a training officer, of sorts.”

“Right. And where is he now?”

“He’s a little bit boring, to be honest,” the princess said, wrinkling her nose, “he said he’s catching up on reports back at the lodge.”

“He said?”

Leia shrugged, “you know how spies are. I never trust them.”

Jyn huffed a laugh, “maybe not actually boring then.”

“Maybe.”

They headed down to the beach, walking in companiable silence, letting their feet get caressed by the water as they moved. Critters that lived under the sand moved rapidly in front of them with every onslaught of water, hiding as they went. The tide was low and the waves seemed to be knowingly calm in the presence of their princess. After they reached the other side of the cove, far away from the prying eyes of the villagers, Leia divested herself of the large sun hat she was wearing and gestured to Jyn to get into position.

 _She wasn’t kidding then_.

Leia was smaller than Jyn, but Jyn wasn’t a large woman by any means, so she had been the one to teach Leia how to use her small size to her advantage, which meant that whenever they sparred now, she usually got a taste of her own medicine. Leia had gone from a sprightly teenager to a strong woman with wiry muscles hiding underneath diaphanous ceremonial gowns in the years Jyn had been on Alderaan. Her face was still rounded with baby fat, her laughter carrying the echo of something that Jyn recognized but had never actually known, but she struck Jyn in all the right places and before she knew it, the younger girl had her pinned to the sand with a triumphant curve to her lips.

“Good job,” Jyn smirked, "you've been practicing."

Both young women got up, brushing sand off their bodies.

“If all I do is worry about royal engagement and protocols and about what my mother thinks of my hair, I might as well go insane,” replied the teenager, sliding her expensive synthcotton shorts down her legs and pulling off her tank top.

“I’m going in,” she said.

Jyn felt sweaty and the sea air was starting to mix with it and the sand, making her skin feel like it was covered in some sort of translucent paste. She got rid of her clothes as well, standing there in the fading daylight wearing a practical swimsuit. She left them next to Leia’s and followed the other girl into the water. 

Who knew that Jyn Erso, born in a prison, raised first in the trappings of luxury and then on the mossy coast of a backwater planet, who had learned to survive in the jungles of Onderon, would feel at home for the first time in the wide expanse of the sea.

 

*

 

At some point after they had come out of the water with pruned fingers and toes, with the sun absent except for tinges of purple and pink in the sky, Leia said goodbye and walked off in the direction of what amongst themselves they referred to as the royal lodge. Jyn set off back home by herself, then, looking forward for a quiet night reading up on the harpoon she had received as a gift. The beach was quite deserted: the fishermen had finished their day’s work and the ones that set off at night weren’t there yet. So she was solitarily walking back home until she wasn’t.

Someone was coming in her direction, by their gait looking absent-minded. She cracked her knuckles without even thinking, because it wasn’t anyone she recognized from the village. This was a Human male, slender and taller than her, though not exactly taller than average. Once she got closer, she could see that his features were those typical of someone whose home planet had been previously occupied by Alderaanians, but was not from the planet itself. His hands looked strong, but were not exactly large, his mouth a firm downward line. His hair, licking into his eyes from the force of the wind, seemed to frustrate him, though he was taking pains not to let that be obvious.

She went past him, just sending a sideways glance his way as he walked past. Tan synthcloth shorts, a crude-colored shirt like the ones she remembered Alliance personnel wearing. Just tucked under the waistband and hidden by his shirt – anyone without a trained eye wouldn’t be able to even guess, because the cloth was thick and billowed in the wind - was a small blaster. He didn’t even spare her a single glance, so she pretended to stop to look out at the sea like the local girl she pretended to be. Another glimpse and there it was: he walked in the direction of the lodge.

“Reading reports my arse,” she mumbled out to the waves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I forgot to mention that this is also a beach AU. Most of these places I made up here are based on some loose Earth geography, down to their names. I am being very loose with whatever information there is out there about Alderaan. I have not watched SW Rebels yet nor finished TCW or even read whatever comics there are about Leia and the Organas. This is based on what I read on Wookiepedia and whatever nonsense that comes into my head. 
> 
> Some headcanons that are floating around fandom are referred here: Alderaan as previously being an Empire and having conquered other planets, such as Fest; and Jyn's love of blades.


	3. A journey

The droid was waiting for her outside the medbay, which was unsettling in itself. The new chassis was obviously identical to the one they had left outside the data vault on the citadel and she remembered where exactly Kay had got the new one, after he had extracted a map to the facilities from another KX series droid, as soon as they infiltrated the base. Unbeknownst to them, K-2SO had insured his survival. And, it turns out, theirs.

Only for the Force or fate or whatever to put him in the sort of situation that would require the same kind of sacrifice. Again.

She closed her eyes and thought of Bodhi’s missing leg; of Chirrut sitting next to the bed where Baze lay unconscious. Of Cassian.

Of Leia and whatever the kriff she was going through at that moment.

“Are you all right, Jyn?”

She glanced up at her friend, reveling a bit in the crick in her neck she always got when doing so, “yeah.”

“We need to move quickly,” he said, “Senator Mothma is a little bit impatient and decided to take a page from our book.”

“I gathered as much,” she replied, playing with the fraying ends of her gloves, “is- did anything I was wearing back there survive?”

“Your boots. They’re on the ship.”

They settled into a leisurely pace in the direction of the hangar and Jyn took in the movement around base: people pushing carts with supplies around, transports carrying pilots to their ships, droids whirring by. It almost seemed like a day or two ago, before they left, except for the thin veil of grief that she caught on people’s faces. Something churned in her stomach at the thought of her responsibility for it, when she noticed that most of them avoided her eyes. Try as she might to peg the blame on the Council for their decision not to back them, she was still the one that had led those rebels into battle.

She felt her eyes harden, dry as if the wind on Scarif had made her incapable of producing tears. This was something she _had_ to fix, even if it wasn’t entirely her mistake.

K-2 touched her shoulder with his long fingers.

“There it is,” he said, “Senator Mothma said it’s the best they could do in such short notice.”

It was a generic Imperial freighter, Corellian in origin, smaller than most the Rebellion was used to stealing. It looked just a touch banged up, enough so that they could justify arriving at the station after the battle. Her brain couldn’t help but compare: on Scarif they had Bodhi, with the codes and the surety of an Imperial pilot’s voice. This time… Well, it would have to be up to Kay. They had thought about using the ship they had flown back into Yavin IV, the one where she had sat in a semi-catatonic state, with Cassian lying on her lap with his legs all askew, his hands pale and clammy in hers. It would be far too suspicious, though. By now, Imperial authorities had probably realized there had been a security droid with the rebels who broke into the Citadel.

“What does the manifest say?” she asked.

“Enough that we can convince them we got caught in the battle. From then on, I think your idea might work.”

She boarded the shuttle, laid the duffle that was biting into her shoulder on the floor.

She tried with all her might not to dwell on the last time she had made just a move. It wouldn’t do, this constantly thinking back to three days that seemed like such an eternity ago.

They settled in the cockpit, Jyn making herself comfortable in the co-pilot’s seat.

“I picked up some nutrient bars and other... food, because by the way your bag was hanging, I supposed you were only worried about weapons,” Kay said through first checks.

She was still so nauseous from the bacta and the pain meds they had pumped her full of in the medbay, she hadn’t even thought about eating.

“Thanks,” she said, her tongue edging out of her teeth as she concentrated.

“You and Cassian are infuriatingly alike sometimes.”

“I’ll take that as compliment.”

“You shouldn’t,” the droid sniffed, but Jyn knew that somehow, even through his usual bluntness, Kay didn’t mean it.

He spoke into the comm on his right, “this is the _Serendipity_ , ready for take off.”

Laughter bubbled out of Jyn in what was half a cackle, half a snort.

“Yes, they were not kidding when they said this was generic,” Kay seemed disgusted with the ordinariness of the ship’s call sign as much as she found it hilarious.

The comm crackled as authorization was granted and Jyn felt something lift off her shoulders that she didn’t know was there as they flew over Yavin IV's jungles. They burst through atmo and she felt pinpricks in the edges of her eyes, at the thought of whom they were leaving behind.

“Would you like to know the odds of our success?” Kay asked quietly.

“Not yet,” she said, further resting her head against the seat and closing her eyes as the usual hurtling of breaking out of the moon’s atmosphere passed. On realizing the droid had kept quiet, she turned her head in his direction, “you’re not going to tell me anyway?”

“No,” was the curt reply.

“Thank you.”

Her hands had been gripping the armrests and she reached out with one of them to touch the droid’s cold arm.

Cassian’s best friend only nodded.

“Setting course for Tatooine.”

Something clicked inside her when she heard the name of the planet Leia was supposed to have gone to.

“All right. Let’s do this.”

 

*

 

It still meant more than a day in hyperspace and at times, Jyn thought her chest was about to burst open with the anxiety caught there. At some point, Kay suggested she rest and though she spread out in one of the small bunks in the dingy crew cabin, wearing nothing but one of Cassian’s shirts - which she had stolen from his old quarters on base - she felt restless, her legs twitching and breath catching every time she thought of their plan, their stupid, stupid plan. She couldn’t get comfortable, and tried lying in different positions: on her belly, she felt smothered; on her back, she felt vulnerable; on her side, she felt even more restless.

She was lying there in the dark, trying to breathe herself into some sort of stupor, when she heard the typical clanging of Kay’s steps outside the door. She got up, pulled her trousers on – what a weird thing, to be prudish in front of a droid –, and opened the door.

Kay had his hand out, a pair of white pills contrasting with the black durasteel of his palm.

“I always have these on hand, but Cassian never took them.”

She was still blinking against the lighting of the corridor, harsh on her eyes compared to the darkness of the cabin.

“What are they?”

“Anxiolytics.”

“You mean tranquilizers?”

“Of a sort.”

“You had them for Cassian.”

“Yes.”

Something snagged in her chest. She had Cassian’s moods charted, after all this time. Though he was excellent at hiding what he felt, after a while, she had learned the little things to watch for; his nostrils flaring, his hands twitching and him making it seem like it was deliberate, how sometimes he would seem all right but would spend the day gobbling water like it was the last drop of it on Alderaan or how otherwise he would eat very little. He used to stare out at the sea or at nothing a lot, a vacant look in his eyes, and she could only guess what he would be mulling over in his head.

“He never took them,” she said.

“Never.”

“Stupid man,” she mumbled and reached out for Kay’s hand, closed his fingers around the pills, “I don’t want them.”

“You need to be well-rested, Jyn.”

“I’m guessing you had this conversation with him tons of times,” she said, finally stepping out of the cabin and heading towards the galley.

The droid made a tutting sound, “like I said, infuriatingly alike.”

She opened the duffle he had dropped there, the one with the food, and hoarded through it.

“Ha,” she said, fishing out a particular tin, “don’t know why you bothered trying to make me take those pills.”

“Considering your vitals, I thought herbal infusions would be insufficient.”

She huffed and grabbed an old kettle from the pitiful assortment of pots and pans in the ship’s cupboard. Kay was hulking against the bulkhead of the alcove.

“Talk to me,” she said, her trembling hands closing around a tin cup as she settled it onto the small counter.

“Talk?”

“Yes, just, you know, tell me whatever.”

“You’re confusing me with Princess Leia’s annoying protocol droid.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Let me guess,” she said, and she felt her heart fraying a bit at the edges as she spoke, “Cassian never took those pills because he doesn’t like the thought of being drugged.”

“Yes, no matter how much I pointed out to him that they were meant to improve his performance as an agent. And that they were actually prescribed by medical,” she only hummed in response, “my assessment is that you won’t take them for similar reasons. Either that or you don’t trust me.”

“They’re for Cassian,” she replied, “not for me. And I do trust you. I just don’t think I should. You know, take them.”

She turned to look at the droid and heard the typical whirring sound he made when he was processing new information. Not unlike the intelligence agent they were talking about, in a way, she thought, feeling humorous and sad at the same time.

“I appreciate the you way you care for us, Kay,” she said slowly, “but- you weren’t there with us.”

“I wasn’t,” and Jyn could swear he sounded mournful.

“We heard you die, Kay. And then,” she closed her eyes, tried to stop the stinging around them while at the same time keeping an ear out for the water in the kettle, close to boiling, “I saw Cassian die.”

“I understand that you might have difficulty dealing with Cassian’s eventual demise. Even though organics are aware of death as inevitable, I understand it is something that takes you a lot to process.”

She laughed and felt her cheeks moist. She ran her fingers over them with one hand while pouring the boiling water onto the herbs with the other. She was reminded of hearing Saw’s bellowing voice for the last time as she ran, Cassian’s gloved hand tight around her arm, and then of seeing life fade out her father’s eyes – what she could see of them on that platform in Eadu’s rain. She hadn’t had time to _process_ having them back in her life, much less their being ripped away from it again so soon. When Cassian had been shot off the data tower and clanged down over beams and finally down on the ground below, it was not the first time she had lost someone she loved, but it had felt so infinitely worse because it hadn’t been his choice. Her mother had chosen, in a way, and so had her father. And Saw had made it quite clear that his leaving her was deliberate. Yes, he had shoved her in other people’s direction, but he had been her father for as much time as Galen Erso ever was. Cassian could have left her hundreds of time; could have paid no mind to Leia’s friend back on Alderaan, for starters, or only paid her whatever attention his job required.

However, he had always been there, in the sea spray of Catrynn Cove, a firm arm on her back on Jedha and then on Eadu, even if she had repelled it afterwards, only to feel overwhelmed once he had brought her an army. And then.

Then he had resurrected. She had thought, for those first seconds after Krennic was killed (now she knew his name) that she was dead and hallucinating. She had to be. She had seen Cassian  _die_.

She turned to K-2SO, tin cup hanging near her lips, “if I’m going to do this... If I’m going to join the Alliance, I’ll have to- I’ll have to deal with everything that’s happened to us – to me. But not now – I have to get to Leia first.”

Kay whirred, again, settled his optics on her and she could swear she could see life in them, just as she had outside the datavault. He seemed to recall that moment as well.

“Your behavior is so very unpredictable, Jyn Erso.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

 

*

 

It was slightly jarring: how they dropped out of hyperspace near Tatooine and it was just there. From a distance, it looked like a small moon, but when she really looked, she could see it was made of dull durasteel. Two TIE fighters zoomed around it and then were taken in its hangar. She and Kay remained in silence, the droid’s grip in the controls loose, her jaw contrastingly set.

She hadn’t seen it until now, of course, her father’s machine. A metallic taste filled her mouth and she tried to swallow it down. It only surged back again.

They didn’t say anything while they approached it, as if it was an animal that might be easily scared and lash out.

She waited for the comm to crackle, for inquiries to come, a sad repetition of days ago, when Bodhi wasn’t in a medward bed with half his leg gone, but it never happened. Instead, they heard a clanking sound and Kay looked at her, gestured to the controls, as they kept moving regardless of his maneuvers.

A tractor beam. Great.

“Well, it at least buys us some time.”

She tugged at her hair, pulling strands off her bun so she looked at least a little rankled. She had traded her boots, more out of comfort than of necessity. She wanted to carry at least of something of Scarif with her that wasn’t the churning in her chest. They were pulled into a large hangar, where cargo ships and TIE fighters rested and technicians zoomed past.

She shoved a certain dreaded object in Kay’s direction.

“There is a 64% chance that they will realize our deception.” 

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

And with that, he fastened the cufflinks around her wrists, the second time in two weeks this happened.

Jyn settled her face into a scowl and before the ‘troopers outside could even order them to open the ship, K-2 lowered the gangplank, shoving her along with a knee to her back.

“This rebel tried to highjack this ship following the skirmish on Scarif. I thought bringing her here was the appropriate course of action. You can search the ship if you want.”

One of the buckethead’s tilted its helmet to the side.

“That was days ago. Where were you this whole time?”

“Busted hyperdrive,” Kay sniffed, “and it was surprisingly difficult to incapacitate this woman.”

Jyn bared her teeth. The ‘troopers, however, seemed to buy the excuse. They shrugged and let them through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read a fic sometime ago where Kay saved them by using the KX series he incapacitated on Scarif as backup, but I don't remember whose it is. I always thought this was a neat idea. 
> 
> Please let me know what you think. This story is getting increasingly hard to write.


	4. The newcomer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally finished Rebels and got my timelines straight. I think. I edited a bit of Chapter 2 because bits of it irritated me, tbh. Nothing drastic, but just so you know.

Running was one of the few things that were enough to calm Jyn’s heart when she felt vulnerable, even living in the edge of a large planet such as Alderaan. She had always deep down felt tempted, honestly, to just disappear from the Organas’ radar, afraid of when their inevitable betrayal would come. But then she would remember the two days she spent in that bunker on Tamsye Prime, knowing but not wanting to believe that her second father had abandoned her, of the hand that was extended to her, at Saw’s own bequest – she later found out.

She had a house, she had food, she had a name to hide behind.

And she still had her legs, so she ran, down the expanse of murky sand, feeling the sea spray on her skin as she dodged the waves with her fast feet, not unlike she had done on Lah’mu as a child. Sprinting until her calves burned and her skin felt alive with the blood pumping in her veins calmed her sometimes in a way other things didn’t.

Supposedly.

She couldn’t get him out of her head. The way he was making it seem like he was just strolling on the very sand her feet hit now, his expression shuttered and an almost imperceptible blaster on his waist. Trying to look like he was another local boy, as if she didn’t know, hadn’t catalogued, all the local boys in the village. Jyn knew her kind when she saw it, somehow – call it the Force or whatever – but she knew herself and she knew _him_. They were wearing the same disguise; she just had the advantage of having been wearing it longer.

When she reached the edge of the cove, she wasted no time and hiked her way into a trail she knew would go around the large hill that closed it off, onto the side of it where the sea violently hit a wall of rocks. Locals had named it after some cruel entity whose name Jyn could barely pronounce and had cut several paths onto the thick woods that perched on the hill. Jyn had a favorite, one that led to a promontory of sorts. It was a whole standard hour since she had left her cabin when she reached it, dropping onto the side of the path where the unusual purple grass was worn thin.

Should she tell Leia that her “handler” – or whatever it was that they called him - had made all the sirens in her head blare since she had seen him the day before?

Should she avoid her friend?

It was one thing to deal with the locals, people Jyn interacted with to guarantee her survival – food and some level of protection –, but it was quite another to have someone in her life who counted on her, in a way. Saw had raised her to be a soldier, like him, and taught her that attachments were a weakness to a soldier. Having someone who counted on her, even for comradeship, was an attachment, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t the first time she had felt sorely lacking. Leia had always made her feel that way and it wasn’t because of wealth and the trappings of royalty.

She let her heart rate settle, heard less of her own breathing and more of the sea crashing below against the wall of rocks further down.

The part of her brain that listened to Saw was slowly quelled by the portion of it that appreciated being under the Organa’s protection.

Jyn closed her eyes, took her mother’s kyber crystal from under her blouse, and just breathed.

 

*

 

When she got home, the sun was almost setting and her legs ached with fatigue. The light on her comlink was on, making her guilt about leaving it behind when Leia was nearby especially grating. She picked it up and saw with relief that there had been one attempt at a call, with a message.

_Dinner at the lodge today?_

With the comm still in her hand, she ambled over to the couch in what passed for her small living room and let herself sit, the sound of sand from her thighs scattering over the synthleather a faraway nuisance. 

Leia knew exactly who she was. Her father had never hidden anything from her, because she was being tailored to more than just replacing her mother on the throne. If her estimation was right, from what she gathered from their conversation yesterday, Leia was as much of a spy as Jyn had been an operative in Saw’s cadre.

Why was Leia throwing her in her handler’s path? Either she blindly trusted the man or she was in on whatever he was doing here.

Or perhaps he was, after all, just escorting the princess on a trip, for safety purposes or even loyalty.

This whole situation was infuriating and Jyn couldn’t even begin to explain why. It was one thing to deal with the abstract notion of a handler or an instructor. She had thought the sentient in question would be older, perhaps a veteran of the Clone Wars, someone who would be more interested in lecturing Leia than snooping around the village.

Yesterday she had been proven wrong.

Or perhaps the little she had dealt with Saw’s paranoia right before he left her was beginning to get to her.

Well, Saw himself had taught her that dealing with one’s fears meant facing them head on.

_Sure thing. What time?_

*

 

The tide had risen by the time she made it to the lodge, which was secreted from the tiny village among vast dunes covered in green and purple vegetation. The wind had picked up and a spray of sea air and rain clung to Jyn’s heavy cloak as she walked up its front door after leaving her speeder parked near the mouth of the house’s private hangar. She put her hand to the lock console and it whooshed open, startling the protocol droid that had been walking by.

“Oh, my, miss Pontha! Good evening! Please close the door – my joints can’t bear this humidity.”

“Hello, ‘Threepio,” she replied jovially, keeping the dread away from her voice as best as she could.

The doors closed behind her and the droid walked up to her, offering to take her outer garments.

“Thank you,” she whispered, because she never learned how to deal with its steadfast ceremony.

“The princess is in the main chamber, I believe,” C-3PO provided helpfully.

She offered a tremulous smile in return and walked the marble steps all the way to a wide, comfortable living room, where a rustic fire crackled in the corner, keeping the chill of the evening at bay. Leia sat on a sofa the color of ripe meiloroons, her hair piled in braids on the top of her head. Leaning against the mantelpiece was the young man Jyn had seen the day before. Her heart stuttered in her chest as she took him in: his half-lidded eyes half-covered by dark hair that was longer than what one would expect at the Alderaanian court. His features were as sharp at the blade she had hidden in her boot and just ordinary enough to ensure he was forgettable. He looked bored by her presence, as if Leia having a guest over was the sort of occurrence he was used to. She schooled her face into something equally nonchalant.

“Hey,” she said simply.

Leia offered her a wide smile, the sort that showed just how young she really was. She came forward in a billow of white silk and the fresh smell of soap.

“Tanith,” a hug, then her arm was tugged, “come meet Jeron.”

Oh, so there would be no real names. Some of the knots Jyn felt build in her shoulders loosened somewhat. She put her hand out, knowing that if he took it, he would feel the callouses of someone who had been handling guns and tools instead of the softness she presumed was habitual in the hands of the princess’ other friends. This wasn’t court or Coruscant and there was nothing she could do about it.

“Pleasure,” he said as he squeezed her fingers in a more casual greeting than she was expecting.

“Likewise,” she was curt and felt at least one corner of her mouth rise.

He smiled, a gallant little thing, that she had no business thinking it made him look handsome. He wore the same pastel tones Alderaanians usually dyed their fabrics with, muted blues and greys that clung to his body flawlessly, as would suit a man in the station he was pretending to be. The hand that had taken hers, however, was just as rough as hers, which spoke of toils she was perhaps familiar with.

And that was it. After that, he left Leia and her alone to their easy companionship. She had expected him to pretend to be like what she imagined were the young men Leia was used to be around, but he buried his face behind a datapad and she was reminded that her friend had said that her companion was actually a bore.

Well, that made her feel slightly relieved. She didn’t think she could have born him pretending to try and be her friend, when actually assessing her. As it was, she was merely left with the sense that he was paying attention to their conversation, no matter how inane, but more out of habit than actual suspicion.

Or so she told herself.

When C-3PO announced that dinner was served, Jyn followed the droid’s bidding unthinkingly. Leia, however, didn’t move as fast, instead hovering over her other guest.

“Jeron,” she said, head bent as to try and catch the young man’s eyes, “time to eat.”

Jeron blinked up at princess, face as blank as the white wool carpet under Leia’s feet and mumbled an acquiescence of sorts. Leia left him behind, catching up to Jyn and lacing her arm through hers as they walked into the vast dining room, where a plate of some dish with pink and orange radish was served along with a colorful fish stew.

“Papa says he’s been through a lot and that he’s been assigned here to take some time off,” she spoke in an undertone.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she said, right when Jeron shuffled into the room.

The plates were set near each other at the end of the large table, with pieces of fresh seasoned bread next to them. Jyn, never one to waste good food, soon set herself to eat. Dinner with Leia or her parents was the most socializing she ever got in her life and they never imposed any sort of ceremony around her. Leia’s other guest, for all his training to pretend to someone else, was putting on an effort to seem like it was used to this sort of scenario. Jyn could see the line of tension in his shoulders and the slight tremble in his hands as he grasped the fine cutlery on the table. When he settled in his seat, a rather small portion of the main course on his plate, Jyn decided on a gamble.

“We saw each other, didn’t we?” she said, head tilted in faux consideration, “yesterday evening.”

His eyes roamed over her face, wide and sharp at the same time, in a way that made her feel something weird tighten in her belly, “I think so.”

“Not many newcomers around these parts,” she ventured by way of explanation, making it seem like it was casual that she should notice him.

“Weren’t you one of them once?”

She turned her eyes in Leia’s direction, but her friend was piling food on her plate, her face neutral like she wasn’t having dinner with an exile and what was essentially a rebel spy.

“Yes, all right, I’m not exactly a local,” she replied, munching on her food as not to belie her uneasiness, “but I’ve lived here since I was a child. So.”

“Senator Organa said you were placed under his care when you were younger.”

“Yes, I am a refugee of sorts,” her voice was serene, but unease settled in her stomach and she suddenly regretted the amount of food she had put on her plate.

“Many of us refugees have joined the fight against the Empire,” his tone was equally as casual, like it was a just the sort of throw-away comment one would make at a dinner table.

Jyn bristled, but outwardly shrugged, “not all of us have the luxury of having political opinions.”

“That wasn’t really a choice for me, when Imperial walkers crushed the house I was born in,” he replied, a hint of sarcasm slipping through.

Jyn had barely opened her mouth to retort when Leia loudly cleared her throat.

“All right,” she said, the curve of her lips a forced one that immediately spoke of decided anger, “Jeron, you were placed here under my father’s orders. You must have realized by that that I’m as happy to have a security detail as you are to have to babysit me instead of doing more important things. Tanith-“

“I’m all right,” Jyn replied softly, “I just don’t like-“

“I apologize,” Jeron said in a low voice.

They ate in silence and Jyn couldn’t help but notice that their companion barely touched his food. He wasn’t a large man by any means and like the day before, she could spot defined muscle under the fancy synthcloth his outfit was cut from. His face, however, looked pinched and there were dark circles under his eyes that she now noticed under the harsher lighting of the dining room. When the serving droids took the dishes away, he made his excuses and left Jyn and Leia alone.

“Nice guy,” she said, as soon as she felt he was really gone, “must be an excellent recruiter.”

Leia only shot her a look. 

“You think I goaded him.”

“You weren’t exactly- you know.”

“He was judging me!”

“You were judging _him_ , too,” the younger girl replied, crossing her arms defensively and she lowered her voice, “honestly, my father wouldn’t endanger you, Jyn. Surely you know that.”

“That’s what I spent the entire day thinking about,” she put out a hand when the princess was about to speak, “I know, Leia. I _know._ But-“

Leia pursed her lips, “you two have a lot more in common than you think.”

“So he made it appear.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“You said he was your security detail. Yesterday you said he was an instructor.”

“He’s both,” said the princess, “look. Things have… escalated in the past few months.”

“I know,” Jyn replied, “I keep tabs on what I can pickup through comm channels.”

“Then you know about Mothma.”

“Yes!” said Jyn, “which is why I’m slightly concerned that you’re going to take a Senate seat.”

Leia sighed, “you know what? Let’s take a walk outside.”

“You don’t trust your friend Jeron?” Jyn scoffed.

 

*

 

If they were worried about anyone overhearing them, the crash of the angry waves beyond put both young women at ease. The darkness outside and the hoods of their respective cloaks made it hard for them to communicate nonverbally, but Jyn felt easier knowing Jeron was inside.

“I’ve been far more involved in this longer than you know,” said Leia evenly, “you remember when we purportedly lost those ships in a humanitarian mission on Lothal?”

“Sure.”

“That was me,” said Leia defiantly, “things are coming to a head and it’s time they should, honestly.”

“Okay,” said Jyn, “I’m sorry-“

“It’s nice of you to worry. I would, too, if it were you.”

Jyn squeezed her friend’s arm in response. She felt a question clawing at her throat and forced it out before she regretted it, “has Saw been a part of this?”

“Sometimes,” Leia frowned, “he went missing some time ago, on Geonosis, but he was rescued and since then he’s been on missions that don’t necessarily pass through command.”

“Sounds like him.”

“He’s been… difficult to deal with.”

“Sounds like him, too.”

“Anyway, that’s why Jeron- we need all the help we can get.”

Jyn turned to look at her friend, feeling something churn inside her. Saw had abandoned her, when faced with the risk that she represented, and sometimes, on her worse days, she thought he had been right in doing so. She was sick of feeling threatened because of who she was, honestly, and if things were escalating between the rebels and the Empire, then it only gave her more reasons to stay hidden away. Leia must have sensed it in her somehow.

“He said those things because he doesn’t know who you are,” she said in a soothing tone, “he was told you are one of my father’s humanitarian projects. The Alliance sort of… abhors them sometimes.”

Jyn looked down onto the sand, most of it flattened by the waves of the rising tide.

“Fair enough,” she said, “he also looks really unwell.”

They started making their way back to the lodge.

“You know what war does to people better than me.”

Jyn found no answer was suitable other than nodding in silence.


	5. What is hope?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to those who have following this story. Sometimes I feel anxious and like I'm way over my head and then I remember how supportive people in this fandom are.

The binds dug into her wrists as K-2SO shoved her along through the belly of her father’s creation. She kept her face down, peering only at times through the hair she had left hanging over her eyes, mostly staring at the durasteel underneath her feet, hearing armored feet marching against it or the clipped sound of officers’ heels.

The sounds faded, as they – she supposed - got further away from the hangar. She was taking care to memorize their route, but these bloody corridors looked all the same and Jyn fervently prayed that they weren’t as in over their heads as she felt they were. Kay came to a sudden halt, whirring softly, and sliced his way into the control panel of a door. He shoved her inside a small control station and quickly worked over the console.

“Good,” he said, whirring softly, “no cameras here.”

She leaned against the wall, letting a breath out. Her entire experience infiltrating facilities had been of cargo depots, stationary ships and the occasional factory, stuff that Saw could manage as targets with his cadre of Partisans. In her time with him, she had heard stories of bold ops run by other cells, inside military academies, breaking people from Imperial custody, stealing ships and ammo, but they had never come across this sort of opportunity. She had no idea how Saw had been operating at the time of his death, really, but even while running a fairly decent rebel cell his options for sabotage had been limited. Jyn had thrived in these scenarios.

They had never come even remotely close to what she was facing now.

Scarif had been something else entirely.

Kay was hacking into the control panel and she approached him to see if he needed any help. At the mere thought of it, however, she softly snorted, thinking back on the beginnings of their acquaintance.

“Well?”

“She’s being held in Detention Block AA-23, sub-level five,” he said, “that’s a high security area, reserved for political prisoners.”

“How do we get there?” Jyn asked, fidgeting with the cuffs.

Kay didn’t answer, “I am sorry you have to be bound like this, but if you take them off now, it’ll only be worse later.”

She nodded, “the cell block, Kay.”

“It’s on the other side of the station.”

“Oh, great.”

“Well, I was more concerned with getting us into a place where we wouldn’t draw much attention,” the droid said defensively.

Jyn splayed her palms, despite the fact that it made the binds bite deeper into her wrists, “I’m not blaming you, just- you know.”

“Very well. Her cell block number is 2187.”

“All right,” Jyn sighed, “anything else we should know?”

“Other than the fact that this is a death trap, not really.”

“Good,” she replied, “let’s go.”

*

Her mind kept going back to what had merely been days before, where she had walked along an Imperial facility with this same droid – well, not really the same, but still –, among ‘troopers and officers, with the same sort of objective in mind.

Find them/her. Get out.

There was, in this case, the small matter of a tractor beam as opposed to a shield gate, which Kay would disable as soon as they found Leia. Jyn and the princess, meanwhile, would find them a ship to escape, hopefully amid chaos.

She hoped, fervently, that the Alliance would have recovered the plans by then.

Jyn tried not to think too hard about their plan, because as they crossed the battle station, boarding lifts, walking along seemingly endless corridors where the walls were in the same standard Imperial pattern – the same she knew was inside every base, every star destroyer – the pragmatic side of her brain would start whispering that all this was a useless effort.

 _Rebellions are built on hope_ , she had heard Cassian say on the streets of Jedha, words that later she had repeated to the skeptical Alliance Council.

Hope.

She tried defining in her mind, with her hands shackled and Kay’s metallic fingers on her back, what constituted hope. Jyn had been hopeless for a long time, she admitted, no matter how comfortable her situation had been on Alderaan. However safe she felt had been no match for the loneliness of days on end without seeing anyone who knew her true identity, with whom she could speak freely.

Leia had been one of those very few people.

Leia had, in her sporadic Holocalls and visits, given her hope. It had been in the fierceness of her gaze and in the timber of her voice. Jyn recognized Senator Organa’s influence, but couldn’t help wondering if there had been more to it than that.

She shook her head subtly, as if to clear her vision from the wisps of hair that covered her face, but really to realign her thoughts. Of course Leia's temper was something down to upbringing.

Jyn knew what sheer force of will looked and sounded like. Her stepfather had taught her as much, something her mother had only barely begun in her lifetime. If it weren’t for them, who else would she be?

Her thoughts shifted, when it crossed her mind that Leia had ultimately and unknowingly given her Cassian, as well.

The thought of Cassian, pale and prone on that medbay bed was enough to make Jyn grit her teeth, fight her shackles a bit less, deposit her trust even more heavily on the hand guiding her forward in a mimickery of ordinary Imperial violence.

Then they were stopped, because of course that would happen.

“What is this?” asked the officer, clean-shaven and pale under the typically gray starched uniform.

Jyn fought against the bindings a bit for show, but kept her face down.

K-2SO’s voice sounded weirdly hollow.

“This rebel tried to highjack the ship I was stationed in on Scarif, sir. She has been processed and I have been ordered to take her into custody.”

Jyn felt the officer’s eyes on her and looked up through her bangs. He was looking down her nose at her like she was an insect of some kind.

“I received no indication of this,” he said, frowning, “don’t tell me the system crashed again.”

Inside, Jyn reeled somewhat. Wasn’t this thing fully operational?

“This is prisoner 43685-3453,” Kay recited easily, “there was not much information on her in our databases from what I could access of them either from the ship or in here, sir. But you will find the full records of her arrest in our system. I have just uploaded them.”

“Very well,” Jyn could narrowly feel the relief setting off a hundred thousand butterflies in her stomach, “move along.”

Her heart swelled with a bit of pride. Kay, of course, had no memories of dying outside that datavault on Scarif, but for some reason, he was displaying a level of assurance that had been entirely absent on Jedha.

This was no _“I’m going to imprison them in prison”._

He shoved her rather forcefully along and she almost tripped over a mouse droid.

They kept walking.

*

They walked until Jyn’s fingers started getting numb from the shackles and her toes felt raw against her ill-fitting boots. She had sweat gathered in the usual places, despite the temperature being the common chill of space travel. She wet her chapped lips and heard an admonishing voice in her head – her father’s, perhaps – telling her it would only make it worse in the long run.

They walked, mostly undisturbed, until they finally approached the vicinity of the detention block and its different levels and sub-levels. Jyn wondered faintly how many beings were incarcerated in a battle station most sentients in the Galaxy barely knew existed.

And that was when Kay came to a halt and turned to face her, checking her bindings as casually as possible. She could feel a draft of air up her back, from one of the shafts of the Death Star, an abyss that plunged into what looked like infinity. This area, which led to a number of elevators, had more people coming and going and Jyn tried to steady her breathing as her friend basically concealed her from whoever was going by at that moment.

From behind Kay, she could barely make out what had made him this apprehensive. She watched as two technicians in black helmets walked by, and in between them, someone dressed entirely in black, wearing what Jyn saw was a helmet and whose face she didn’t catch. This person wore a cape and breathed heavily through a respirator that sounded like some upgraded version of Saw’s breathing apparatus.

Jyn wanted desperately wanted to ask Kay what that was. It couldn’t have been another technician, of course, because technicians didn’t wear capes, and at the thought, Jyn had to shove down the bile that rose in her throat at the memory of another individual who wore such a contraption. She had heard stories, of course - from Leia especially - about the Emperor’s right hand, a man so disfigured he lived under armor and whose breathing made an eerie sound, who was not afraid of unleashing all sorts of terrors onto the Galaxy.

If that had been him, Jyn could only dread what was the meaning of him leaving the detention block.

The three men rounded a turn in the corridor and Jyn could feel the tension amongst the people around them lift somewhat, something she hadn’t even been aware of at first. Kay chose that moment to take a slight detour. Jyn was left confused and slightly afraid, but she supposed Kay was buying them time. They found a computer terminal in an area leading to a maintenance bay and Kay stopped in front of it.

“What is it?” Jyn muttered, as Kay forced her to stay upright against the wall as he connected his scomp link.

Kay’s yellow eyes turned white as he scanned both sides of the corridor. After he was satisfied, he turned to her and kept his voice box in the lowest volume possible.

“I am ascertaining if Darth Vader was in the detention block.”

“Darth Vader,” Jyn repeated, rolling the words in her tongue.

Kay ignored her.

“Princess Leia was just recently interrogated,” he said and his voice sounded muted, off.

The last time he had sounded like this was when he had told her and Cassian that the shield gate over Scarif had been closed.

Jyn closed her eyes, a shudder running through her body of what she knew was probably involved in such a scenario.

“Kay, we have to go.”

“I concur.”

From the terminal to the detention block where Leia was being held, there was one elevator ride left. Jyn had ascertained that, bizarrely, elevators had little surveillance here, so she would have one last time to confer with Kay before they set their plan in motion. However, just as the door was closing, a technician ran up to catch up to them.

He looked dismissively at Kay and took a long, hard look at Jyn.

“I didn’t know there were any transfers going on today,” he said casually.

Kay whirred softly, “this prisoner has just been brought in. Your superior officer has been already notified.”

“Huh,” the man said.

The rest of the ride comprised probably of the longest seconds in Jyn’s life. At least the longest seconds in a series of seconds in the last few days that had taken way too much time to pass.

The sheer notion filled her with a sense of exhaustion.

At last, the door opened. A blond, snooty-looking middle-aged officer, probably too bored with his job, looked up at Kay with no surprise whatsoever in his features.

“Ah,” he said, “the new rebel.”

Jyn couldn’t help but pretend to be snarling at the man in order to verify how armed he and the technicians around him were, as well as how many cameras there were in the vicinity.

And so, with a chill settling down her spine and through her stomach, she was processed as a Death Star prisoner on cellblock 2187.

*

She was uncuffed and shoved inside, her heart hammering in her chest and in her ears.

The door was closed and she was left in darkness.

Jyn fell down to the ground, better to steady her breathing and gather her bearings. Like a certain hatch she had closed on herself too many years ago for her to count, this was part of a plan. Mama and Papa had told her to do it then and now this was something she was doing of her own accord. Furthermore, she wasn’t alone. Back then she had had a lantern to keep her company until Saw came to get her. Now she had something even better. She bit her lip as she fumbled with her sleeve, until she drew the device from where it had been sewn to the inside of her sleeve. She shoved it deep into the shell of her ear and took off her left boot.

The cell was still dark, entirely too dark, and she had to rely on touch alone. Until she felt it deep underneath the sole, tiny and made up of spare parts to insure it was so.

She pressed on a button until a minute green light glinted in the darkness. Then she tapped on it twice and waited.

Then she heard them: two taps in return.

She wasn’t alone.

She felt the walls around her for a moment, determining that there was nothing in the cell except a contraption for her to use as a bathroom and a large slab of metal that passed for a bed. At the sight of it, her legs sagged upon sensing the opportunity to sit down after hours of walking.

Jyn hoped that Kay’s messing around with the detention block files bought them the time they needed until the Death Star’s night cycle for her to go to Leia.

Meanwhile, she could rest. How long could that take, after all?

She laid down on the cold durasteel and closed her eyes, not to sleep – she would never be able to sleep in such a place – but just to spare her energy.

It wasn’t clear for her how long she lay like that, but the doors to her cell suddenly whooshed open and she was momentarily blinded. As quick as that, it closed. Her heart had leapt inside her chest and was now beating a hole through it, pounding through her trembling and confusion. Then the lights in her cell were suddenly lit.

Great. It was this sort of prison. The kind that made sure that inmates were as disoriented as possible. She scoffed at herself; she didn’t know what she had been expecting.

This was the moment that she thanked the Force for whatever time she had had being raised by Saw Gerrera.

She sat down in the harsh lighting, closed her eyes again, and waited.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

Until she was lulled into a sort of sleep where she wasn’t completely disconnected from her surroundings.

“Jyn,” came the faint voice in her ear.

She blinked her eyes open. Her head was starting to hurt from the light and it had been what? A few hours?

Jyn fumbled with her fragile little comlink, whispered into it, “I’m here.”

“We have a problem,” Kay said, voice low.

She stilled, waited for him to speak.

“We have just made a jump into hyperspace,” the droid said, sounding rushed.

She felt like acid was being poured in her stomach, the taste of it rising to the back of her throat.

“We have no way to get out of this thing,” she muttered.

“No,” Kay said with finality.

“Do- do you,” she swallowed dry, because of course, she hadn’t drunk anything since getting off their ship, “do you know where they’re going?”

It could mean anything. It could mean they were done in that system and were going where it wouldn’t be detected by civilian craft. It could mean that Leia had given them something when interrogated – she wouldn’t. _Cassian trained her. She’s impossible to break._

It could also mean they were going to wreak horror upon another system like they had done to Jedha and to their own people on Scarif.

“We’re flying to Alderaan,” Kay said softly.

Jyn closed her eyes and bit her lip until it bled.


	6. Market Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you say fake dating in Toydarian?

Jyn didn’t see Jeron again. Apparently, he was only there for two nights and shipped out the morning after their dinner. Later that afternoon, Leia went back to Aldera, and she to her old life of solitude, barring the contact she had with the people in the village and the arguments she got in with her droid over crop rotations.

Her little corner of Alderaan remained oblivious as – from what she could gather through her intercepted transmissions – different rebel cells, especially one in Lothal, grew bolder and bolder in their actions.

It all changed one morning, about six standard months later, when as she was bartering with a baker in the village, she saw a courier shuttle belong to the Royal Family fly over their houses in the general direction of their spaceport. Jyn frowned, because she hadn’t been told anything about Leia coming back so soon. As far as she knew, the younger woman was beginning her term in the Galactic Senate. Later that same evening, another ship, in a similar size, zoomed past her cabin. Another two followed the next afternoon, as she was outside working on her vegetable garden.

She got up from where she was crouched over her sun tomatoes.

“Mistress Tanith,” the farming droid, SB-27 asked from where he was crouched among a few roots, “we are having unusual traffic since last night. Did anyone in the village say anything?”

“Not really, Esbie,” she said, “I’m going to check my comms.”

She smiled at the faint whirring she got in reply and walked back into her house.

However, as she sat with heavy earphones over her ears and went through a barrage of comm channels, audio and text ones, there was nothing of notice, until at last she hit on a channel so encrypted, she couldn’t help but feel tempted. There was a time when she would be doing this sort of thing everyday, but challenges like this never presented themselves in Katrynn Cove. It took her about forty minutes to slice through and when she did, she came across an old Separatist code. She had to wrack her brain for it and when she finally did remember the cyphers, she found it was a request for a meeting at the fish market the next day, around noon.

She frowned. Whoever these people arranging this meeting were, she supposed that she could go and check it out. Well, she had to. Separatists had been once direct foes to Alderaan and therefore to her protectors.

Until another message pinged.

_Can a local girl help a tourist out?_

She froze.

 _Local girl_.

Seppie codes.

 _Jeron_.

A dead weight settled in her chest at the thought that he might have found out who she actually was. Was the message a trap?

How in the Force’s name would Jeron know she would have access to encryption software and know old Separatists codes?

Unless the information came from the Organas themselves.

She replied to the message in the affirmative, even if it felt like acid was pouring down her throat and her stomach. Then she sent a quick message to the secure commline she had with Leia.

_Have you been trying to set me up with your friend?_

Jyn took off the earphones from her ears so the comm chatter from local security and the spaceport didn’t interfere with her thoughts, and propped her feet up on the synthwood surface of her desk.

Leia’s line pinged barely two standard minutes later.

**I might have told him a few things about you. Did he comm you? If he did, please give him a chance. He’s really nice.**

All right.

Apparently, for the first time since Saw had left her to be found by the Massassi Temple rebels, she was getting back into the fray in some way or another.

Jyn hoped she didn’t regret this.

 

*

 

He was obviously sticking to the same cover as a member of the Organa household, the pastel blues of his casual clothes still contrasting with the bright colors the locals wore. The sun was unmercifully bearing down on them, so Jyn kept her head under a deep red scarf better to deal with the heat of the day.

Behind him, the Organas’s protocol droid followed him, from what she could hear, offering commentary on the seafood available.

Jeron paused in front of her with a stupid fake smile and pressed his smooth cheek to hers in greeting, a bare brush of his lips to her skin, just polite enough. She followed his motions on the other side of his face.

They were Alderaanians, after all.

“So kind of you to offer to help,” he said, getting right to business, apparently, “I have no idea of how much to get and what is good or not. Threepio here suggested you would know better, despite his understanding of the guests’ palates.”

Something unused in Jyn’s brain locked into place like it wasn’t rusty and old.

“How many people?” she asked, looking over the different types of fish and squid in the stall they were next to.

“Six, counting the senator.”

“I thought it would be more, considering the ships flying past,” she commented breezily.

“Mostly cargo,” he replied, “you know how diplomats are. Always with the retinues.”

“Right.”

She spent the next hour and a half teaching Jeron how to recognize fresh seafood and what better fit the taste of the different species his boss would be entertaining that evening, trying not to feel bothered by his fake graciousness, his fake smiles and how he charmed every single being manning a stall in the market.

“You don’t need to get smarmy,” she said in a low tone as they shuffled next to each other with their purchases, “they know who you work for.”

“That is precisely why I need to get smarmy,” he replied and briefly touched her arm, “I will still need your assistance after we get everything we need.”

“Right,” she said, because from the beginning she doubted it had been only about fish.

Jeron turned to Threepio, “I need to speak alone with Miss Ponta.”

She tried to keep the cold feeling that wrapped itself around her heart as the protocol droid walked away guiding the rover crate they had stashed their purchases with.

“Will you join me for a walk?” he asked, putting on what she was starting to call his “market face”.

“Sure,” she shrugged, “will someone help Threepio with the bags?”

“Yes, we came on a speeder with a driver.”

He led her from the village square down to the beach. _Less chance we will get overheard._ And once at the edge of where the sand was thin and dry, he stopped to remove his shoes and roll up the cuffs of his trousers. Jyn unbuckled her sandals and buried her feet in the hot sand. He hissed at the contact when he did the same.

“Not much of a beach goer, are you?” she asked.

His eyes were only a touched narrowed as he considered her for a few seconds.

“I was raised on an ice planet,” he muttered.

“Huh,” she said, her mind automatically conjuring the Outer Rim on a galaxy chart.

There was an ice planet in the Atrivis sector, but she didn’t remember what it was called.

They walked closer to the water, where the tide was low and the waves glimmering in greens and blues in the sunlight. The sun was still too high in the sky, so the little beach goers there were, were cooped up under hovering tents.

“What do you need?” she asked, taking care not to use the word “want” as to not sound so harsh.

His face had shuttered again as soon as they had left the market; no more dimpled smiles and painfully bright eyes. Jyn had felt a little more comfortable, and at her question, though, something along the edge of his lips indicated he found her genuinely amusing.

“You’re not going to ask what is going on,” he stated.

“I don’t need to. For some reason your boss decided to invite a bunch of people here – that much I can tell is true. Leia wasn’t very forthcoming. She just told me to trust you,” she replied.

He wasn’t looking at her, but rather watching the ground as the waves lapped over their bare feet. And not smiling anymore.

“You shouldn’t,” he said, simply.

“Don’t worry. I don’t.”

He nodded, eyes hard and still on the ground.

“I’m the only one- I’m the only one of us at this summit of sorts,” he said, “and I need help with two things. First, making it seem like he’s just entertaining guests; second, monitoring transmissions. The princess said you could do that.”

Jyn nodded.

“With the first – well, people here already know you are a friend of the family. So it makes sense that we meet and socialize. It helps me-“

“It helps your cover.”

He nodded, swallowing, “I’m sorry for dragging you into something you want to have no part in.”

She couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows at that, “last time we spoke, you weren’t as understanding.”

He made a motion with his shoulder.

_You didn’t think you needed me then. Not like this._

“What should I look for? With the comm lines?”

“You’ll know if you come across it, specially on this planet.”

She raised an eyebrow, “weapons?”

He nodded curtly, “yes, leaks about them.”

“Isn’t it risky? Bringing this sort of _topic_ to Alderaan?” she asked.

“Yes, but if my boss went anywhere else, communications and – well, cargo – would be harder to monitor and to hide. At least here we can better work the port authorities.”

He was giving her more information than necessary, which told her he was trying to show that he trusted her. Either that or-

Or he analyzed the odds and figured that she didn’t stand much chance of being captured by Imps.

“You’re thinking rather loudly.”

“Just wondering,” she said.

“I think you can really help, even from here. The senator himself told me not to involve you too much, but I know-“

She turned her eyes to him fully and he was looking at her in a way that told her he was debating inwardly if he should finish the sentence.

“Know what?” she asked, sounding nonchalant.

“Know a good recruitment opportunity when I see one,” he said.

“Oh, so this is what this is,” she replied dryly.

He huffed out an unamused laugh, “I wish every potential recruit I came across knew Separatist codes and could slice into comm channels.”

She started heading up, away from the water and he kept following. She unwrapped her scarf from around her hair and folded it up, not looking at him. Next, she took off her shift, which left her standing there only in her synthcloth swimsuit. Jeron’s face was as blank as an empty flimsi.

“Maybe that’s precisely why I’m not a good recruiting target,” she offered, laying the scarf and the shift down on the sand and putting her sandals, soles-up, onto them, “I’m going for a swim. You can come along or you can watch my things. Make sure my clothes don’t fly away if the wind picks up.”

With that she turned around and headed into the water.

 

*

 

Jeron stayed back in the sand, but she couldn’t shake him from his peripheral vision. It was like her brain refused not to acknowledge his presence, although it was not registering it as a threat. She felt something low in her belly at the thought of him there, watching her in the water, something she didn’t really recognize.

She knew he was watching her.

Maybe that was it.

When she walked back, resisting the pull of the water around her legs by slightly kissing at where the water was foaming around her shins, he was sitting there, wind shoving his hair onto his eyes, the sun a little less intense than it had been half a standard hour before, when they had started walking.

She stopped in front of him and wrung her hair.

His eyes turned to her and she shivered, feeling a bit self-conscious, so she lowered herself and grabbed her clothes back, pulling them on despite her body still being wet.

“Let’s grab something to eat,” she said by way of distraction.

If he wanted to be seen with her for the benefit of his cover, she knew exactly where to take him.

Veppa was a Toydarian who ran a small inn in the main thoroughfare leading to the beach from the village and which could be a tourist trap, if the Cove had any tourists. As it was, it was the only restaurant in the village, which had started out as a simple grocery store. Veppa had started serving hot meals for fishermen and the occasional merchant passing through, and in a few decades had started taking in guests.

Because of his habit of serving outsiders, Veppa had taken to Jyn, seeing in her another victim of the Empire’s wrath. When she walked in, he quickly flitted over to her, his booming voice shouting a greeting in his native language. Under Jeron’s careful gaze, she replied in kind.

When they were settled at a table with a view to the ocean, he considered her and did something with his mouth she irrationally decided she wanted to see him do again.

“A friend of mine would say that your behavior is continually unexpected, Tanith Ponta.”

Jyn decided not to dwell on how his eyes on her were making her feel.

“Is flirting with me a requirement as well?” she asked, skimming over the menu although she had no need to.

He didn’t answer her, pretending to be equally transfixed by the list of dishes in front of them.

“I know what to get us,” she said, “unless you have any allergies?”

“None,” he smiled, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

She called Veppa over, relayed her order in Toydarian and in no time, they were served with raw, bright orange mollusks and chilled Alderaanian wine.

“Bet this beats what you usually have back home,” she offered, trying to be a little more friendly.

“If you mean palace food, then, well- it’s different, but-.”

“No, I meant _home_ ,” she interrupted.

He immediately knew what she was talking about. She obviously didn’t mean his planet – _ice planet in the Atrivis sector I can’t bloody remember what it’s called_. Leia had told her she and Jeron had a lot in common, which probably meant he hadn’t seen his home world in as long as she hadn’t seen either Lah’mu or Coruscant. She meant the Massassi Temple, of course, like she had called whatever cave or abandoned building she had lived in when running with Saw’s cadre.

“Oh, right,” he said, “well, yes, it does.”

“You’re looking better than you did when we met,” she commented around a mouthful of food.

He had looked like he didn’t quite fill his clothes back then. Now not only did the light blue shirt and the dark trousers actually fit him, but his pallor was a little healthier. Jeron still looked like he was nearly a decade older than he probably was and now that she was facing him across a dining table, she could tell there were things he would rather keep hidden in the line of his shoulders and the edge of his eyes.

He finished off his mollusks and right then, Veppa brough them steamed, bright blue ones, accompanying a purple leaf salad. Jeron thanked the Toydarian in his language with an infuriating grin and a perfect accent. Jyn pretended she wasn’t affected, although she knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. The man was a spy, after all.

“I’d just got back from another job,” he said by way of response, focusing on the leaves on his plate, “it hadn’t gone well.”

“I see,” she replied, “well, I’m glad.”

And after that, they ate in silence, taking turns contemplating the sea. With bellies full and enough whispered faux conversation so she could draw the attention of Veppa’s other patrons, they left, after Jeron insisting he pay Veppa for everything they consumed.

“But Tanith’s like family,” the Toydarian said indignantly, buzzing his wings intensely.

“I insist to repay your hospitality.”

Veppa gestured to Jeron with one of his thin arms and the rebel leaned in his direction.

“You can do so by not hurting her,” he said pointedly through his snout.

Jyn had to school her features not to show how horrified she was at the thought, but at the same time relished that Veppa himself – who was rather sharp – should have fallen for the impression she was trying to convey. The only thing she didn’t suppress was the heat she felt blooming over cheeks and neck, as Jeron turned to her with the shadow of a smile on his face.

“Never,” he said in Basic.

He walked her back to her cabin and Jyn tried not to feel too swayed by the Alderaanian chilled wine or the sight of his features as the last of the sun’s rays played over them.

Jeron stopped at the feet of the stairwell leading up to the small house like some idea of a proper gentleman.

“Thank you,” he said softly, “I- I had a good time, honestly.”

Because there was no one around, there was no point in him doing the polite thing and kissing her cheeks like he had done at market that noon and she found herself slightly disappointed at the notion.

“You’re welcome,” she said, reaching out a hand in his direction.

He took it, shook her hand just the appropriate amount and let it go. 

“Comm me tomorrow,” she found herself saying, “with- if you need anything.”

His mouth curled up a smidge, “I will.”

And he disappeared in the direction of the Lodge.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I know very little what this is. I've just had this on my mind since seeing a gifset of Leia being rescued by Jyn (and of course, the famous panel of little Jyn and little Leia standing behind their adoptive fathers). This is going to alternate timelines and I'm probably going to be unhappy with it and take forever to finish. I'll need lost of cheering along. ;)


End file.
